Through the years ABRE Puerto Rico has dedicated its efforts to explore the variables that impact schools' performance. This research is the result of previous findings that ABRE Puerto Rico has obtained in those efforts to better understand Puerto Rico's public education system.
During 2019, based on its webpage reports, ABRE PR decided to further develop its research towards discovering the underlying reasons for the school performance discrepancies found am geographically proximate schools with similar enrollment and poverty levels. This resulted in the research proposal titled "Education Gap Analysis," sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation and Fundación Colibrí. One of the main questions to be answered through extensive research was: Why do schools with similar characteristics and within proximity to each other differ so much in their academic proficiency? Using proficiency data from www.abretuescuela.org, ABRE PR selected and analyzed 14 schools, resulting in valuable findings and some unanswered questions that deserved further investigation.
ABRE PR discovered that school principals are currently in need of concrete organizational resources such as materials, personnel, and technology, among others. Additionally, it has been proven that school principals' skill development for the effective management of their schools, such as effective administration, leadership, technology management, and evaluation processes, among other skills, are statistically significant when correlated with their ability to improve their job performance and positively impact their own health. However, extensive research has shown that school principals have had to rely on developing different strategies as coping mechanisms (instead of additional skills) to help them “manage" the different problems that come up on a daily basis.
As mentioned above, school principals experience many challenges which they cannot control. This context amplifies the possibility for school principals to develop some type of burnout, which could end up affecting their personal comfort and health but also the well-being of their schools.
